I almost say, “Next time then,” but remember there will be no next time. Only tonight. The desire to have him inside of me right now, fast and hard, wars with the need to slow everything down so I can savor this one-night reprieve.
He puts on a condom, and I almost laugh and ask him why. We haven’t used condoms since our early dating days. I was always trying to get pregnant, or definitelynottrying and on birth control. That was in a monogamous relationship founded on complete trust. We aren’t that anymore. We’re both…single. He was in a relationship with another woman and can’t assume I haven’t been with anyone else.
When he settles between my legs, I expect him to thrust inside, but he dusts kisses over my jaw, down the curve of my neck and opens his mouth on my nipple in greedy suction. I clutch his head to me, tangling our legs while he worships my breasts. He braces his weight on his elbows, and I reach between us to take him in my hand. I stroke, at first slow, and then fast, tightening and loosening my grip. He releases a harsh breath, dropping his forehead to mine.
“You better stop,” he says. “Unless you want me to come all over you.”
With a wicked smile up at him, I guide him inside. I’m not prepared for this moment, the reunion of our bodies after so long. Every part of me gasps at the feel of him. Not just my body, but my soul clicks with his again. His fingers play over me like tumblers on a safe and I open for him. Only ever for him this way. He goes still, and instead of moving, lowers his head to kiss me. He’s hard, but the kiss is so soft, my eyes water. I caress his shoulders, his back, his ass, rediscovering the ways he’s always been beautiful and noting how he’s changed. He’s as big and hard as I remember. The fit is just as tight and if possible, more perfect. My body moans a welcome as he starts to move.
“Fuck, Yas,” he groans into my hair and grips my thigh, bringing my knee up to bracket his hip. “This don’t make no sense.”
I love how his voice, his language, roughens during sex. The completely controlled, always polished front collapses when he loses himself in me. I stifle a whimper when he hits the spot that always makes my eyes roll back in my head. He doesn’t have to fumble or search or guess. His body knows mine. Our skin, our hands, our breaths find a familiar rhythm that is as exciting as the first time. He pounds into me, our grunts and groans mingling as the bed moves and the headboard bangs into the wall. I close my eyes and give myself over to the primitive dance of our bodies and the feral sounds we make as wetake and take and takeandgive and give and giveuntil he reaches between us, stroking my clit so I come again before he does. He drops his head, kissing our temples together, one hand braced above on the wall behind us, the other gripping my thigh.
“Baby.” It rushes out of him on a long breath as he tenses over me.
I go still at the endearment he probably didn’t even notice slipped. I want his body, but I yearn for this intimacy, his affection, just as much. Clutching him close, I map the muscled terrain of his back with desperate hands. I suck at the taut skin of his throat, sink my teeth into his shoulder, clench around him reflexively as he lets go.
My heart pounds so hard, I swear I should hear it, but the only sound in the room is our ragged breaths. It is the quiet shock that follows an earth-shattering event. We watch each other mutely as all the pieces fall around us, reordering the world as I had come to know it.
In the middle of the night I awake with his strong arm holding me from behind, his grip possessive, his hands wandering. He cups my face in one large palm, his thumb brushing over my cheek, eyes blazing in the lamplight, and he kisses me. We said once, but he fucks me again, and it’s even better the second time. It is slower and more tender and more heartbreaking because I know this time…itisthe last.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Yasmen
Mom, what’s for dinner?” Kassim asks, peering through the French doors of my office.
I glance up from an email from Harrington’s boosters about new uniforms for the band. You wouldn’t catch Deja dead in a band uniform, but Kassim keeps threatening to take up trombone, so I may get involved.
“What’s for dinner?” I lean back in my chair and tease him with a smile. “Why am I the only one in this house cooking all the time?”
Kassim looks abashed, his eyes going wide and his mouth dropping open a little. “Um…well…’cause I can’t cook?”
“You telling me you can assemble a robot from scratch, but you can’t follow a simple recipe?”
His brows lower, furrow. If something is “simple,” Kassim assumes he should be able to do it.
“Maybe spaghetti?” His voice evens and his shoulders square with determined confidence.
Today, spaghetti. Tomorrow, the world.
“I already ordered Indian.” His features relax with what looks like relief and I laugh. “But thanks for the offer.”
My cell phone rings on the desk, and Mark’s contact flashes up at me on-screen. I frown, tempted to ignore the call. We were never exclusive or serious. I was completely honest with him about that, but it still feels wrong talking to him when I can’t move without long-unused “screwing” muscles aching from my night with Josiah. That man still puts itdown. I’ve been shoving away memories…okayfantasies…spawned by that night in Charlotte ever since he dropped me off from the airport yesterday and headed home.
“You gonna get that?” Kassim asks, flopping into the chair across from my desk and pulling out his phone.
“I guess privacy’s too much for a mother to expect,” I mutter, knowing he’s oblivious.
I grab the phone on the fourth ring. “Mark, hey.”
“Yasmen.” A pleased note runs through his voice. “Glad I got you. Thought for a minute it was gonna roll into voice mail.”
“Sorry. I was…” I glance at Kassim, engrossed in his game. “Busy. How are you?”
“Good. I’ve missed you.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that in a way that is honest and also not hurtful.